[pianotech] SWELL

[John Delacour]

At 11:27 -0700 19/03/2011, Nicholas Gravagne wrote:

>And I never heard of a cutoff bar termed a deafening member; the 
>cutoff bar in the photo does not seem at all radical in its limiting 
>effect given what seems to be enormous real estate.

I see I'm in danger of having to add grins winks and smileys to some 
of my postings to avoid being dragged kicking and screaming before 
the courts of the moral majority <G> :-; :-)

I'll answer the questions and make my comments on the soundboard in 
another thread, but with regard to "swell" I wanted to differentiate 
this old monster (which has no swell) with the later, smaller, models 
in case the lack of cut-off in the 5'5" and the 6'3" have anything to 
do with the development of swell.  I still haven't unearthed the 
special name Brinsmead gave to his later developments in the 
soundboard and I then need to associate this with dates so that I 
know which period this special design belonged to.

The 9 footer has less "real estate" than a modern concert grand, 
since it is parallel (almost) strung and has a narrower tail -- not 
that all parallel strung grands do.  As to the cut-off bar, you say 
it's not radical, and indeed I've seen pictures posted to the list 
showing curved cut-off bars, even if further in, but this is an 
English piano from 1870 and I've never seen it on any other English 
piano.  The straight line cut-off is common enough.

I am not jumping to conclusions and saying that the lack of a cut-off 
on the later Brinsmeads or the use of channeled bars has anything to 
do with the swell but it's possible they contribute -- who knows. 
Ron mentioned a particular re-manufacture he did that had this 
enchanting property, and it would be interesting to hear how the 
soundboard on this particular piano was designed and whether it 
differed much from other re-manufactures he has done.

The most puzzling question is why a few pianos have this quality and 
most don't and occasionally, as I mentioned in my original posting, 
the raising of the dampers does the opposite thing and actually seems 
to rob the sound of fullness.  And I repeat that I am talking in all 
cases of good pianos, with good sustain and good power.

JD